si mabait at si malihim, mga agam agam sa kuro kuro, 2021
dimensions variable, acrylic, oil, enamel, watercolor, canvas, grommets, s hooks, keychains, carabiners, zip ties, various dog chains, rubber, wood, brass, chicken wire, walis tingting, walis tambo, bamboo, plastic, trinkets, fob key, recycled fabric, glue, marbles, paper, foil, ink, pencil, coconut, polyurethane, galvanized airline cable, sound.
Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo, Vancouver Art Gallery, May 29 , 2021 - January 03, 2022, curated by Jenn Jackson, Christian Vistan, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Phanuel Antwi and Grant Arnold.
documentation by Dennis Ha
sound collaboration with Francis Cruz and Qian Cheng
Patrick Cruz’s artwork is informed by the intersections of cultural hybridity, the machinations and paradoxical effects of globalization, and the complex practice of decolonization. As an immigrant to Canada and an expatriate from the Philippines, Cruz contemplates the conflicting feelings and conditions of leaving, longing, and coming back to one’s homeland. Driven by folk sentiment, Cruz channels the embodiment of play as an ethos for survival and a lubricant for generating creative ruptures and disjunctures.
For this exhibition, Cruz’s new installation reorients paintings from an ongoing work, Landscape Painting, a maximal installation of unstretched canvases that cover the floors and walls of the gallery, away from these surfaces onto a series of clotheslines creating labyrinth-like passages. These paintings embody Cruz’ durational and iterative way of working, developed over years of painting and reworking and across a multitude of versions and translations, places, and experiences.
Among these hanging paintings, an experimental radio play resonates from a mouse hole. Inspired by a recent rodent visitor in Cruz’s studio as well as Filipino AM radio dramas, this play takes up the perspective of the mouse and reflects on questions of belonging and how moments of longing might materialize.